ONLINE GAMBLING AND CASINO GUIDE

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with former Cincinnati Bengal’s Defensive Tackle, John Thornton. And if you know me, you’re going, “HUH?” right about now because you know I do not know a thing about football. Well, I dated a semi-pro team owner/Jet’s Scout back when I was young and beautiful, so of course I feel qualified to interview the football guy. I know professional football players are typically the most stand-up people around and they always have some good stuff to talk about. So I asked John if he’d give me the opportunity to interview him. Nice guy that he is, he said yes.

First of all, the guy looks a lot bigger on TV. I expected this humongous guy coming at me at full speed, but up strolled a regular looking guy. He totally blended right into the Vegas tourist scene. He’s 6’3” of muscle, no doubt, but the websites say he weighs in at 300 pounds. I think he’s lost some weight.

John Thornton is no stranger to the Internet. He’s been blogging since 2004. His first blog was a website where he would post interviews of players every Sunday and it had a fan forum where he could interact with fans. He’s been doing web type stuff ever since because, he says, “It’s just a good way to interact with people.” He likes the social media programs like Twitter. On twitter he is @johnthornton, in case you’d like to follow him. This fascination for the web has grown into a small business he has on the side for website design. Which would explain why his current blog, AllProBlogger.com, is such a nicely designed site. This is not what you’d expect from a defensive tackle kind of guy.

I did not know what “free agent” meant, so I asked him. He explained to me that a free agent can sign with any team. You are not allowed to be a free agent until your fourth year. So, for example, you come out of college and sign a four to six year deal with a team, then after that you can sign with anyone else. John had signed a four year deal and then he signed for six years. Now he can sign with anybody he wants to sign with.

So, the big question is, just what is he going to do now that he’s a free agent? He’s going to make his announcement in a couple of weeks he says, so stay tuned for that.

This guy does not seem to sit still in life, though. He is also founder and CEO of Jockbiz, a company which helps professional athletes make the most out of their careers. They mentor players from beginning to end and cater to all professional athletes, not just football. And of top of that he’s doing charity work and has a Celebrity Bowl scheduled to raise funds for Easter Seals. If I remember right, that will happen in Las Vegas.

I couldn’t help but notice, John Thornton played for the Titans 1999-2003. So did Steve McNair who was recently murdered. So I asked him about McNair. He said he played with him for four years.

“You never think that kind of thing could happen. So tragic,” he said. “Life is so short… It was tragic. Steve did a lot of good stuff. He was a real good guy and sometimes it gets overshadowed by what happened to him.” John explained McNair was in Nashville and did a lot good stuff for the community and was loved there. All his teammates and coaches loved him.

I asked what McNair was like and he explained, “He was a country boy and real quiet. He really wasn’t flashy. He really liked to keep to himself a lot. He interacted with his teammates, but he wasn’t the guy who was out and about or on commercials, you know. He’d do his thing then he’d like to go back to the farm.” I suggested he was just a family guy, then? And John said, “Yeah, I know a lot of things say he wasn’t, but I think he was.”

I asked John if he thought maybe when these guys sign big contracts, and then the cameras and the money, etc., that maybe they can get a little corrupted morally? He said no, he didn’t think so. “I think people just deal with things differently, you know? I know non-athletes who are probably worse. I know people that you may think they have a perfect life or perfect marriage and then they’re not.” He went on to say that he doesn’t feel like professional athletes are any different really than they were before they were professional. It is just people.

The one thing he says it does do when a person becomes famous is that it breaks down that barrier between people. “It is almost a level of trust there,” he said. He told me the athlete isn’t going to meet any more women than a guy that wasn’t an athlete, but now when he does, there is sort of an automatic level of trust there. A girl will be thinking, “’I know he’s not a weirdo. I know he’s not going to take me home and chop me up’, you know?” He was pretty insistent that for the most part, these contracts and the fame really don’t change these guys from what they already are. They are just being themselves, with maybe a little more opportunity than they had before.

John says he knows a lot athletes that don’t go out and they don’t drink. They are really straight edge like that.

By this point in our interview we were joined by John’s friend, Charles Fisher. Las Vegas has been trying and trying to get a pro football team here, and I wanted to know what these guys thought of that idea. “Never. Never going to get a football team,” Fisher said while shaking his head. John thought the gambling aspect of the city would just kill any hope for it. Fisher said he just couldn’t see it happening. “There is just too much temptation,” he said, “an athlete having a bad day, an athlete lost some money, down and out…. Someone catches him on a bad day and ya need the money. There could be a lot of that going on.” So we discussed. We all agreed no pro teams for Las Vegas. It would be just too easy to pressure players and catch them in a weak moment. It is a recipe for disaster.

So what have they been doing while in Vegas? They’ve been doing a lot of working, networking for their business concerns and nightclubbing. They’ve had a full schedule while they’ve been here for the past few days and tonight they are going to have a good time hitting the clubs. I watched as they were programming their brand spanking new cell phones they just picked up, and they looked like they were getting a little tired from all the work and fun in our little town.

A few days ago, John sent me a text he had just left Bare. I told him that seeing naked boobs will make him go blind. He sent me a text back telling me, “I still have my sight ”. So is he that tough, or were there no topless girls at the Bare pool that day?

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